First deputy prime minister Andrei Purgin of Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic says international experts are no longer interested in debris of the plane

DONETSK, September 02. /ITAR-TASS/. International experts investigating the downing of a Malaysian Airlines plane ask the authorities of Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic to once again comb the crash site for small belongings of crash victims, republic’s top official told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.

“We have finally got an official letter asking us to comb through a concrete zone of some 40 square kilometers,” first deputy prime minister Andrei Purgin said, adding that most things had been collected immediately.

International experts are no longer interested in debris of the plane, he said. “Anyway, it would be a problem to remove them, as the railway was blasted, and vehicles are not suitable either” as the scene is an area of combat operations.

He said the local authorities had repeatedly asked to assist in taking out Boeing debris. “There were flat cars and low-loaders as well as cranes, but experts kept dragging feet,” Purgin said. “Now things have become more complicated, but the cargo may be taken out via Russia. I don’t understand why this matter is not discussed,” he said.

A Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 295 people crashed in east Ukraine on July 17 on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Both sides in Ukraine’s conflict accused each other of shooting down the plane with a missile.